Tempt Me With Kisses by Margaret Moore Page B

Rhonwen.”
    This lack of a nickname was obviously not something good, yet she saw no reason that Rhonwen should be so excluded. “She is Welsh, too, isn’t she?”
    Caradoc took another sip of wine before answering. “Nobody knows. She was abandoned here by her father, a tinker, whose woman died in childbirth. The woman was not cold in the bed before he was gone. We never even knew her mother’s name, and her father never came back.”
    “That was not the babe’s fault,” Fiona said, upset to think that the shy, quiet young woman was faulted for the circumstances of her birth.
    “So my mother thought. She paid a farmer’s wife to nurse and raise her, and believed Rhonwen well taken care of. It was only years later that we found out otherwise. She was treated little better than a slave by that woman and her husband. That is why she is here now.”
    Yet not accepted, either, although Rhonwen had been born there.
    Dismay settled upon Fiona, like a blanket dank and damp, overwhelming the other emotions Caradoc had stirred into life.
    For if Rhonwen was not accepted, what chance had she?

Chapter 5

    T he next morning Fiona awoke with a start to find Rhonwen standing silently at the foot of the bed, her expression as unreadable as her lord’s and a tray covered with a linen cloth in her hands.
    Yawning, Fiona rubbed her eyes and sat up. Tired from her journey, her thoughts and emotions a jumble, alternately excited by the memory of Caradoc’s kiss and touch, troubled by anger and shame at the past, wary of what the future held, her mind had been active far too long after she had retired.
    Even when she finally fell asleep, her dreams had carried on the conflict. Caradoc, Iain, Cordelia, Dafydd, Ganore, Rhonwen … all had paraded through her slumbers like a troop of angels and demons bent on waging war for her heart and happiness.
    She glanced at the window and realized the sun was beaming in. It was a fine day, and already further along in the morning than she was used to rising. “What hour is it? How long have you been waiting for me to wake?”
    “It’s nearly midmorning, my lady,” Rhonwen answered as she balanced the tray against her stomach and lifted the cloth to reveal sliced bread and cheese and a mug of what smelled like cider.
    “So late?” Fiona asked, appalled that she had slept so long, and yet distracted by the food. Her stomach growled loudly, and she smiled sheepishly. “It is much later than I usually wake. And I am not a lady, Rhonwen. At least, not yet.”
    The young woman’s brow furrowed in confusion. “Lord Caradoc says I am to be your maid. What am I to call you?”
    “Fiona, I suppose.”
    “Th-that doesn’t seem right,” Rhonwen stammered, and Fiona felt sorry for making an issue of how she was addressed.
    However, if her name sounded lacking in deference, “my lady” was certainly presumptuous, and if she thought that, she could easily imagine what Ganore and the rest of the household would make of it.
    “For now I think you should call me ‘mistress,’” she replied, using the term the servants at home had called her after her mother had died and she had taken charge of the household for her father.
    She thought of something else and her smile died. “What of mass? Have I slept through that?”
    Rhonwen nodded again.
    The people of Llanstephan would surely think she was lazy and irreligious, too. In his next grace Father Rhodri would probably condemn her for a pagan and suggest she be purified by being burned at the stake. “In the future, wake me at dawn with the rest of the household.”
    Rhonwen blushed and stared at the floor, and immediately Fiona regretted her sternly commanding tone. That might be appropriate for Ganore, but not for this quiet, obedient young woman.
    “Forgive me, Rhonwen,” she said, hugging her knees. “I am a stranger in a strange place where the people do not know me. Apparently many have already taken a dislike to me. I don’t want to do